The Senate’s Scrooge session

2013 hasn’t always been a year dominated by petty partisanship. At the beginning of the year, Reid and McConnell cut a deal to preserve the use of the filibuster in exchange for a handful of modest changes aimed at quickening the Senate’s pace. After that, the Senate passed a range of bipartisan bills, including a sweeping immigration measure, a proposal to overhaul student loan rates and legislation empowering states to collect online sales taxes.

But trust between McConnell and Reid quickly evaporated, with the GOP leader believing that the Nevada Democrat and his closest aides were breaching Senate protocol by directly trying to defeat him in his reelection bid next year. Reid has denied the charge, but the two avoided each other for weeks, even relying on intermediaries like John McCain to serve as a go-between.

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“It’s a shame when two leaders get to the point where they can’t get along, can’t even talk or converse, then we’ve got serious problems,” Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said Tuesday. “That’s got to change.”

All the while, a fight over presidential nominations was percolating, starting with the GOP’s decision to initially filibuster Chuck Hagel as defense secretary, followed by Reid’s threat to invoke the nuclear option in July to confirm labor nominees. He finally pulled the trigger last month to gut the filibuster on executive branch and virtually all judicial nominees.

Reid viewed the GOP’s attempt to block a spate of nominees as a blatant effort to cripple the president’s efforts to staff up his administration, and he was upset at what he believed was an arbitrary decision to filibuster nominees to a key federal appeals court irrespective of the nominees’ qualifications.

By changing the rules on a party-line basis, rather than the much higher threshold of 67 votes, Reid and his caucus made the unprecedented move to make it easier to confirm nominees without the backing of the minority party to break a filibuster. Only a simple majority of senators is now required to break a filibuster, rather than 60.

Republicans argue the move is a heavy-handed Democratic power grab that will come back to haunt them.

“I think this high-handed, sort of sit-down and shut-up governing by the Democrats is wrong,” said Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.). “They did it with the health care bill, they are now doing it with nominations.”

With Reid pushing the Senate to finish for the year, there’s little incentive for the GOP to relent on the nominations front. Even though Reid doesn’t need any GOP support to confirm the nominations, any Republican can draw out the debate anywhere from two hours to 30 hours between each vote depending on the nominee. And they’re still peeved at Reid’s refusal to allow amendments on a range of bills.

The end of 2013 could have ended relatively quietly. To avoid a repeat of the tense fiscal cliff fight that stretched through New Year’s Eve 2012, the two sides agreed to set a series of budget deadlines to preserve their holiday season in 2013.

But with Reid filing procedural motions Monday evening to cut off debate on 10 nominations, the Senate could be in session until next week if Republicans refuse to yield back any time in order to speed up the debate.

John Thune, the No. 3 Senate Republican, said that, given Reid’s hard-ball tactics, “I doubt there will be a lot of willingness on the part of Republicans to yield back time.”

But if Reid keeps the Senate in session next week, Thune said the GOP may not even show up.

“What I’ve told Democrats is if they want to do nominations all next week, and the Christmas holiday, there probably will be some Republicans here to watch the floor, but there are probably going to be a lot of Republicans who aren’t going to stay around,” Thune said. “They may be here doing this by themselves.”

Democrats seem perfectly fine with that. When Republicans refused to cooperate with Reid on scheduling nomination votes last week, the majority leader kept the Senate in session past midnight and in the wee hours of the morning to push his nominees through.

Despite infuriating the GOP, Democrats say the unprecedented rules change was worth it — given that several nominees who were facing GOP opposition, including Jeh Johnson to head Homeland Security, Mel Watt for a federal housing agency and Nina Pillard to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals — have since been confirmed.

“We had no choice,” said Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). “We had reached the point where we they had been denying votes on nominations or denying nominations with no substantive reason.”

With most of the substantive business shelved until next year, senators are eager to get home — and many hope that by the time Thursday evening rolls around, the two sides will be smelling the jet fumes.

Look no further than last weekend, said Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), referring to McConnell’s decision to cut a deal with Reid delaying votes until Monday in order to spare brutal Saturday and Sunday sessions of votes through the day and night.

“You notice the Republicans didn’t insist on it last weekend, and we’re coming up on Christmas break,” Harkin said slyly. “The betting is we’ll be out of here Thursday or Friday, and the nominations will be taken care of.”